ix ocelli

A solo exhibition by Mexican artist Vica Pacheco exploring the relationships between sound, matter, water, and non-human forms of life through sculpture, installation, and sonic works. About A drop falling on water is perhaps something too insignificant to deserve someone's attention, yet its sound is the result of something quite remarkable. At the end of its descent, right after the moment of collision, a small cavity opens in the surface, trapping a tiny bit of air inside of it. Within a fraction of a second, this bubble vibrates and rises, slipping free as the water reclaims its space. Plip! What we hear is not exactly the sound of water, nor even that of air, but something produced from the tension between them. For an instant, gravity and buoyancy meet, creating something that emerges and disappears almost at once. What follows, this unique sound, gives voice to a space between, to a fleeting phenomenon where two elements come together, interfere with one another, and produce something that belongs fully to neither. Vica Pacheco's multidisciplinary practice also seems to resonate within similar thresholds. Her work departs where geographies, materials, histories and forms of knowledge meet and transform one another, producing new forms and sounds. Whether by bringing ancient Mesoamerican cosmologies into contact with contemporary notions of ecological thinking, or by recreating ancient water instruments and transforming their voices through digital manipulation, her pieces hover between object and instrument, historical reference and archaeological speculation. The title of the exhibition brings together two linguistic worlds: ix, a Nahuatl prefix associated with the eye, and ocelli, from Latin, referring here to the eye-like markings found on the wings of moths, designed to startle predators, creating the illusion of a larger creature looking at them. On one side, a biological eye that looks at the world and produces images, on the other, an image of one that does not see, but that is made to be looked at. By pairing a word rooted in a native tongue with one from the religious and scientific language from across the ocean, the artist seems to bring vision into relation with one of the tensions at play in nature: to attract the gaze through color, shape, pattern, in order to reproduce, and the need to disappear, through mimicry, camouflage and deception, in order to survive. The exhibition takes this tension between attraction and evasion, visibility and concealment, as a point of departure to create a body of works that never quite settle in one of these states. On the upper floor, ix ocelli brings together works that extend the artist's visual universe composed of ambiguous shapes somewhere at the intersection of microscopic and fluid matter, that seem to circulate, connect and mutate. On the lower level, where vision becomes dim, the exhibition opens with a sculpture that creates an intimate channel between two people, carrying a whisper from one side to the other. From here, a group of darker works extends this idea of amplifying faint sounds, while also evoking certain visual impulses of the natural world. In the sistema nectario (2026) series, we find different examples of these dynamics: vivid colours that could be conceived to attract pollinators, sensual forms resembling the reproductive organs of plants, shiny surfaces that almost invite touch and eye-like forms alluding to the ocelli of moths. While some of these references might draw the gaze in, the identities of the pieces remain ambiguous and resistant to recognition, suspended somewhere between attraction and mystery. As with the tiles, these works appear caught in a process of becoming propelled by the incessant movement of water and its soothing sounds. Unlike fountains in the Western tradition, with their spectacular cascades made to entertain, the flow in these sculptures is more subtle, behaving almost like feeble springs, or bodies salivating, sweating, tearing. In these pieces, water not only moves but carries sound, shifting the focus from the visual to the audible as its presence emerges and is amplified through the works. In Aztec writing, there is an interesting similarity between the glyphs for water and sound: water was represented by a flowing, curling shape, while sound was depicted as a similar drawing coming from the mouth or an instrument. Both depictions seem to give shape to something that flows and cannot be contained. In Pacheco's work, this relation between the two becomes evident: water moves visibly through the sculptures, while its sound also emerges and travels through them. For several years Pacheco has created clay flutes that use air and water to produce notes. In the sistema nectario series, however, this function is less explicit, retaining instead a subtler sonic dimension employing the same elements. If in her hydraulic instruments water moves through the flutes, setting the air in motion and generating sound, here water could be seen as almost becoming the instrument itself: a percussive membrane punctuated by drops falling at slightly different speed, each vibrating through the works at its own unique, unrepeatable pitch. Perhaps if the encounter between all the different forces, elements and narratives that converge in Pacheco's work could produce a sound, it could be imagined as something resembling the one produced when water and air meet: a fleeting yet vivid plip! Curated by Mattia Tosti and Orsola Vannocci Bonsi. Vica Pacheco is a Brussels-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, sound and performance. Drawing on archaic sonic technologies, ceramics, and animist imaginaries, her work explores the relationships between sound, matter, water, the body, and non-human forms of life. Her performances and installations often activate ceramic instruments and whistling vessels through breath, water, air, and movement, creating immersive sonic environments shaped by material processes and acoustic experimentation. She studied at La Esmeralda in Mexico City and graduated from Villa Arson in Nice in 2017. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and venues including Palais de Tokyo, Paris; MACBA – Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon; Fondazione Elpis, Milan; Public Gallery, London; PEANA, Mexico City; Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City; Gaudeamus Festival, Utrecht; Hacer Noche, Oaxaca; Q-O2, Brussels; Culturgest, Lisbon and CTM/transmediale, Berlin. Read more Toggle Sculpture Audio / Sound Crafts Installation